Jill Greenberg’s glass ceiling

28 June 2011

I love her photographs — her site is called The Manipulator, for she was one of the first photographers to use exaggerated, almost cinematic digital manipulation to doctor her images. There’s no mistaking a Greenberg cover of a magazine (remember that awesome, funny, disturbing series of crying babies she called “End Times”?). I met her once — she’s scary brilliant, just like women ought to be more often.

…it was my assertion that this project of femininity is a (self-created) distraction from getting to business and living and enjoying one’s life as a woman. I knew this to be true as a 21 year old but I have lived it now. I chose not to obsess about my imperfect bodily state and do my work, but whether I like it or not the physical reality of being a woman still informs everything I do.

Hence she created these images that show the water knocking women into awkward positions, while the women absurdly wear heels to make themselves look sexy even though the shoes and, for that matter, the bathing suits hinder their project.

We will fail at this project of being female. Look and see thyself, my friends.

GLORIA SWANSON

2013 film & TV reviewed (with occasional late 2012 films)

Side Effects
House of Cards
The Invisible War
How to Survive a Plague
5 Broken Cameras
The Americans
Blancanieves
Top of the Lake
The Great Gatsby
Stories We Tell
The East
Before Midnight
A Girl and a Gun
The Bridge
The Bling Ring
The Heat
Elysium
In a World...
Orange is the New Black
The Fifth Estate
Enough Said
Populaire
The Wall
The Act of Killing
Twelve Years a Slave